Posted
by
Soulskill
on Thursday May 21, 2009 @06:35PM
from the majority-achieved-now-let's-work-on-tyranny dept.

New research from the NPD Group has found that the number of Americans who play video games has surpassed the number who go to movies. In a survey of over 11,000 people, 63% had played a video game within the past six months, while only 53% had gone to a movie. They also found that the purchase of game consoles was on the rise, as were new methods of accessing the games themselves, such as playing over a social networking site or downloading a game onto a mobile phone. The report said, "the average gamer spent just over $38 per month on all types of gaming content" in the first three months of 2009, adding that "video games account for one-third of the average monthly consumer spending in the US for core entertainment content, including music, video, games."

I've been waiting like 15 years for Duke Nukem Forever to come out! Now, what am I going to do?

Duke Nukem is Apogee's answer to Snake Plissken [wikipedia.org], played by Kurt Russell in John Carpenter's Escape films. Design your own Snake-alike character, find someone who sounds like Russell or Jon St. John to voice him, and put him in your favorite moddable PC shooter.

No, the MPAA should now sue Electronic Arts for their lost sales. EA can cite their use of DRM as a means of trying to prevent their customers from playing their games so that they go watch movies instead. The verdict will go to the highest bidder.

Well I'm guessing they'd blame movie piracy. "Nobody goes to the movies because they download them instead, omg, what are we going to do?"

The last thing they'd concede is that video games are clearly a better value. You can buy most of them on release day. You take games home (or download them) and play them as much as you want, or at least for a month on subscription games. On the other hand, going to the theater is stupid-expensive (that's a formal metric), and you go home with nothing. So... four evenings for $40+ or a bunch of nights for $40+?

Yeah seriously...back in my EQ heydays, $10-$15/month for 20-40 hours of entertainment (I was in college and highschool back then, what did you expect me to do, homework??) every WEEK. Plus the occasional $30 expansion.

Or $10 for 2 hours of entertainment at the movies. Real tough decision.

DVDs not as bad, but they aren't available at launch. Also, you almost never watch them enough compared to a game to get the same entertainment value. However, my LOTR Extended rivals ES4: Oblivion in dollars per hour

Watching a DVD at home isn't the same as at a cinema, you say? Playing a video game on your own system isn't the same as a night out in an arcade, either.

Yeah, games at my house have better graphics, more versatile input devices, better story, and more in-depth gameplay.

If the screen size and sound mattered that much to me, I could put together a large LCD or projector with a 7.1 sound system and have similar or better quality. Not to mention, there's something to be said for a quiet movie at home with someone I actually LIKE versus sitting in a theater with 50-100+ annoying mouth-breathers that don't know how to shut up.

50 years ago, movie tickets cost $0.15 [answers.com]. Applying the consumer price index [bls.gov] we find that the price today would be $1.12 if movie ticket prices had gone up in the same average proportion as other prices.

Considering how much films today depend on special effects, and considering that so many effects are done by computers, one would believe that the cost of producing a movie should be lower than fifty years ago.

Some people say that "all capitalists are greedy pigs", but obviously some pigs are greedier than others.

Agree. Being conducted online, it shows a bias to computer users who are more likely to be gamers. Now go do the same study by having people stand in a strip mall holding clip boards where there is a movie theater nearby.

NPD is a sleazy "we might give you a prize someday"-type harvester of your personal information, but does that mean they're hiring incompetent statisticians? Can't they just have purchased information on moviegoing from some other firm? Et cetera, et cetera. IANAS.

It's flawed for more reasons than that. They're comparing any type of video game playing to one type of movie watching. Compare apples to apples and see how many people go to the arcade vs. how many people go out to the movies. Or compare any type of video game playing to any type of movie watching. Hell, look at how many video games are rented vs. how many movies are rented. I'm no statistician, but I'd wager there is a larger section of the video store devoted to movies than to video games for a reas

1. They will hype this anyway and
2. soon this would split into number of violent games played
3. and then split into number of teenagers playing the violent games
4. and then moms against video games go crazy
5. and push some senator and then will be proposal for a bill,
6. then game industry fights back
7.

It would be interesting to know, out of the folks that still go to movie theatres, how many of them go to see them in the imax format. With many families having big screen tvs at home, I'm sure many of them (as I do) wait until it comes out on dvd. The one exception to that is if its a movie I'm interested in watching and its at an imax theatre, as the imax experience with a 6 story movie screen is hard to replicate at home.

Let's say that any reasonable $60 game provides at least 20 hours of entertainment. That works out to $3 an hour. If you get a solid RPG, that's more like 60 to 80 hours of interactive entertainment that you can enjoy whenever you want at home.

For many of us, buying last year's game drives the price down to $30 or $20 a game, skewing the ratio even further, making it likely you pay somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 cents an hour.

Going to a movie is $12.50 for 90 minutes of non interactive entertainment, which is $8.33/hour and that doesn't even factor in the cost of transportation, snacks, and the trip to olive garden beforehand.

Dollar for dollar, video gaming is cheaper and more convenient than a trip to the movies.

This is how I convinced my girlfriend that pre-ordering Left 4 Dead was worth it.

I buy about 2 games per year, and play the hell out of them, so even though Left 4 Dead had a 50% off sale 4 months after release, by then I'd already played enough to pass the $1/hour line on my $45 purchase.

Going to a movie is $12.50 for 90 minutes of non interactive entertainment

Or perhaps $7.50 for a matinee. But what makes movies an even worse deal is that the $7.50 or $12.50 is per person, which adds up if you're taking the family to a G or PG rated film. With a video game, on the other hand, four players can plug in controllers and smash the crap out of one another [wikipedia.org] or blow one another to smithereens [wikipedia.org] until the cows come home. A video game doesn't charge extra for more players unless the publisher is greedy enough to disable shared-screen play and spawn installations.

I still spend over $38 a month on games because i am supporting 2 MMORPG accounts i dont really use much. But just barely... I am mainly playing Flatout 2 online, a 2 year old game that was $30 new! Have that down to $.05 per hour or less:)

Porn doesn't count toward core entertainment? If not then that $38 or so will be half my entertainment $$ not a third;) A few of us actually pay you know...although being grandfathered in 10 years ago at $10/month instead of $30 helps!

600 hours on a game? Holy shit....I've never understood people that enjoy doing that.

That's half an hour a day for just over three years. Some of the fanatics on animalxing.com's forum have played Animal Crossing at least that much. I'd imagine that The Sims or Tetris might be similar, not to mention Chess or Go.

Dollar for dollar, video gaming is cheaper and more convenient than a trip to the movies.

Not many people really operate like this. Yes, the perceived entertainment 'value' vs cost is a factor, and yes, people often think movies are ripoff. But then $10 for a movie ticket that sucked isn't as much a loss as $60 for a game that sucked.

But honestly, if you try to argue that:

(best value) = min($/hour)

It doesn't work. getting min($/hr) down to zero is trivial.

You'll always just end up going for a walk, flying a kite, shooting hoops, playing cards, reading a book from the libary, contributing to an oss project,

And with a bit of effort you can easily push min($/hr) into the negatives by finding an activity that actually pays you.

Why would you EVER pay even 25 cents an hour to play video games when you could MAKE 50 cents an hour... or even 50 dollars an hour doing something else...

Clearly our method of placing a value on how we spend our time is more complex than a a simple minimization of cost function.

Not many people really operate like this. Yes, the perceived entertainment 'value' vs cost is a factor, and yes, people often think movies are ripoff. But then $10 for a movie ticket that sucked isn't as much a loss as $60 for a game that sucked.

But you can rarely get refunds for movies, on the other hand if you have a game that you think sucked you can ebay the thing for only about a 10-20 dollar loss if its new enough.

Clearly our method of placing a value on how we spend our time is more complex than a a simple minimization of cost function.

Assuming you enjoy movies just as much as video games, its about the same.

You'll always just end up going for a walk, flying a kite, shooting hoops, playing cards, reading a book from the libary, contributing to an oss project,

Sure, but many people would rather play video games then that. I really don't enjoy walking any more than I have to and a bit more just to keep in decent health, flying a kite depends on the wind. Most geeks really suck at any type of athletic sports, ca

But you can rarely get refunds for movies, on the other hand if you have a game that you think sucked you can ebay the thing for only about a 10-20 dollar loss if its new enough.

So in your best case (losing $10) you break even with the worst case of going to a movie. And in reality, as you noted that only applies to new games if you are lucky. Most of the time you'll be lucky to get 50% of what you paid for it after all is said and done.

And PC games, what the with the activation codes, or worse, the online

If your job is on the negative side of the fun scale, then even though you get paid, you wouldn't choose to use your free time for work over a game. Meanwhile, if there's a very fun activity that costs a bunch of money (skydiving, perhaps?), you might decide that you'll only do it once a year.

But then $10 for a movie ticket that sucked isn't as much a loss as $60 for a game that sucked.

Except that if the game sucks, I can either return it (in some cases), or sell it back/eBay it and make some of my money back. For a brand new game within 30 days of release, you'll probably make back 40-60% of what you paid, if you're smart when selling it.

If a movie sucks, I have no recourse. Maybe if the quality was really shitty I can complain and get my money back, but otherwise I'm S.O.L. I can't stand outside the theater shouting "Movie stub for sale! Half the movie, half the price!"

Why would you EVER pay even 25 cents an hour to play video games when you could MAKE 50 cents an hour... or even 50 dollars an hour doing something else...

Because money should be made to be used, not to be horded. What's the use in making 50 bucks an hour when I never have the time or inclination to spend 25 cents an hour entertaining myself?

The era of movie theatres is gone. People play games because they're convenient.

Is this really any surprise? Movie theatres are inconvenient, relatively expensive, and you have to take pot luck when it comes to movie goers you might have to put up with. Most people have a TV and a DVD player. Anyone who cares about sound and can afford it has decent speakers. Likewise those who care about big screens they're not so expensive that they're completely out of reach for most. So the advantage that movie theatres had when that technology was out of reach is gone. What's more nothing beats the privacy of your own home. If you live alone or with people who'll put up with it you can watch in your underwear if you like. If you're on call, no problem, just hit pause if the phone rings. Want to get intimate with your date? Well you're much less likely to get arrested if you do at home. If that's not enough the price of food at home isn't overblown and the quality is as good as you make it.

A much better comparison would be spend on DVD vs computer games. Even that's not a fair comparison if you count mobile games because most people would still prefer a decent size screen and don't want to re-encode to watch on a postage stamp sized on. It's a hell of a lot easier to pull out your mobile on your commute than to pull out (and carry) a laptop or DVD player. What's more if your commute isn't very long chances are you can find a game that can be played in the short time you have, vs watching a movie or DVD over several days.

Back around 2003 or so, I picked up a BenQ projector that does 1080i and 720p (that was before they made 1080p most anywhere) or XGA resolution depending on input. It cost me $1100. I then picked up a set of JBL 7.1 speakers for $200 from J&R.

I have a beautiful movie experience in my living room at 96" to which I have connected both my computer and my PS3 for less than $1500. And after 6 years of using it without any care for how often or how long I left it on, the lamp FINALLY died after 5000hrs

The era of movie theatres is gone. People play games because they're convenient.

Is this really any surprise? Movie theatres are inconvenient, relatively expensive, and you have to take pot luck when it comes to movie goers you might have to put up with. Most people have a TV and a DVD player.

That's certainly true for some people, in some situations, but it's hardly true universally.

Seeing a movie in a theater is a social experience. I find that in a nice theater with a good audience, there's a vibe and energy, and a sense of being immersed in the experience that simply isn't there with a bigscreen TV and a few friends. It's not a subtle difference, the two experiences simply aren't even close. I've watched movies in both settings, and sometimes a film which seemed kinda blah and boring on D

When a night out to the movies for a family of four costs MORE than a video game I am not surprised that the average family decides to buy the video game instead.

That's just more value for your money. Especially, when you can just wait a few months and get it through your Blockbuster/Netflix membership and see it for a bare fraction of the price.

What are theaters really offering these days anyways? Loud assholes that won't shut up during the movie? Dozens of people that won't shut their phones off and insist on texting during the movie (creating a distracting sea of lights beneath you)? $5 dollar soft drinks? No ice-tea or other healthy alternatives?

Basically just a bunch of over priced crap.

20 years ago I would go the movies and then decide what I was going to watch. With all the options I have at home (DVR'd TV shows with no commercials), On-Demand movies, half-dozen consoles and hundreds of video games, it will take a really fantastic movie to get me out in the theaters.

Most of the movies I just decide to watch when it hits the rentals. In fact, with Blockbuster and Netflix you can pre-order them to be in your list anyways.

404 not found.Seriously though I refuse to see this shit.And it has Christian Bale. Why?John Connor isn't even the main character in the fucking movie. They rewrote the script to fit Bale's ego. All the trailers show BALE BALE BALE. He gets top billing, too. What a fucking ass.

Do they do the Batman voice where they crank up the bass as he strains his face like he's crapping out a school bus?(I already know that they do.)

While I agree with many of your arguments, I'm not sure about this one...

Loud assholes that won't shut up during the movie? Dozens of people that won't shut their phones off and insist on texting during the movie (creating a distracting sea of lights beneath you)?

So, I go to the movies pretty frequently and in all the times I've ever been to a movie, there is only one time that I had one of those idiots in the crowd. (And to be fair, he had fallen asleep and didn't realize he was snoring.)

What I wonder is - is the movie argument kind of like the Windows arguments? Reuse the same argument over and over because it sounds good (whether it is true or not is irrelevant)? Or, do people *really* ha

Or, do people *really* have this many problems and I've just been fortunate to go to a movie with the right crowd?

I really do. Quite often I have to move seats because some people just will not stop talking. Not just the stereotype of "black" people either. I was at a Harry Potter movie and there were 3 people that would NOT shut up during the entire movie. A bunch of white old ladies.

The percentage is probably about 2/3 times. Seriously. I have tried going to theaters in upscale areas figuring maybe

Well that depends strongly on when the survey was done. The best movies come out in May, June, and July. And the best video games come out in September, October, and November. (I know I'm generalizing, but bear with me.)

So, if the survey was taken in February, then the best games came out within the last six months, but the best movies have not, and that should cause the survey to tilt toward the video game side.

a) In a good year now, I'll go to the cinema twice. Three times, tops. That isn't because I don't like the cinema "experience," either; I still love it. I don't, however, enjoy watching crap, and it is exceptionally rare for Hollywood to make good films these days.

The suits have taken over in Hollywood, and their thinking is actually what is going to possibly destroy the industry, even though for some inexplicable reason, everyone still listens when they insist their doctrine of making sequels and prequels and retreads over and over and over again is good business sense.

It isn't. When was the last time you saw a cinematic remake of a 60s TV show (other than Star Trek, of course; said for the sake of the legions of idiots who would respond with that, while thinking they were hilariously funny and ingeniously clever. Yes, I know you well, Slashdot) which made hundreds of millions of dollars? It doesn't happen. It's either the reasonably new or relatively innovative/risky movies that are the really big earners. The Lord of the Rings, The Dark Knight. If Hollywood wants to survive, the suits have to go, and the industry needs to learn that creativity is what really gets major money from audiences; not canned business as usual. We don't want repetitive garbage; we want to be surprised and emotionally impacted and made to think.

Please, film industry; start making good movies on a regular basis. I very much *want* to go to the cinema more, and if you make good films, you will get my money. I just refuse to pay to watch rubbish. Give me more films with the same level of quality as the Matrix (the first one, and to a lesser extent the second) and The Dark Knight, and I will go and see two of them a month if you make them that often. Most of the rest of us probably would too, I'm guessing.

b) The economic factor. For the full experience, I will spend $20 AUD at the cinema now; $12 approximately for my ticket, and the rest on popcorn and Coke. (Which is horribly expensive, but given that I do it so rarely I justify it on that basis. In previous years when there were good movies on more often, if I still wanted food, I'd get some shopping bags or a backpack and load that up with stuff from the supermarket; so the cinema still got the money for my ticket. I only pirate movies as an advance screening if it's something I *really* want to see, like The Dark Knight, and I still go and see them afterwards anyway, partly because I like cinema trips, and partly because cam quality is always bad)

The point though is that for maybe twice that, ($40 or so) if I've already got a console, I can buy a game which I can then play whenever I want. A cinema trip is a one off; it's fun, but you spend the $20 and then it's gone. $20 will also buy me a month's worth of playtime in World of Warcraft and a lot of other MMORPGs as well.

If you've got the money, a trip to the cinema every so often is one of the most fun things I know of to do; I've always loved it. If you don't have so much money, however, it doesn't make much sense to pay for a one-off experience, when the same amount of money could keep you entertained for a month (or longer) if you spent it a different way. Games thus tend to be more cost effective.

c) The immersion/interaction factor. I love a good movie. However, the unfortunate reality is that, no matter how good your movie is, it's never going to have the same amount of emotional impact for me that a game will, simply because with a game, I'm in control of the character on the screen, so it feels as though I'm actually inside it that much more. With a movie, I'm watching something. With a game, I'm doing something. The T4 movie means I'm watching Christian Bale shoot T800s. A T4 game means I'm shooting T800s. Which one do you think I'm going to want more?

There are reasons why games are going to be a more compelling medium, which Hollywood can't do much about. However, there is one thing Hollywood can do, and needs to do if it wants to survive; it needs to start making truly good movies on a regular basis again. One truly standout movie every 2-4 years isn't cutting it; there need to be at least that many in one year.

Get over myself? I'm not spouting an elitist view here, or claiming my taste in movies is superior. Watch the second Matrix again. It's 5 minutes of slow paced plot progression, followed by 15 minutes of (usually) unrelated, excessively bullet-timed fight scenes. Lather, rinse, repeat. The fight scenes in the original Matrix occupied far less of the movie, and actually fit into the plot.

Modern game makers now have music scores and scripts and god help us "plots!!". The reason people are spending more money on games is pretty obvious, modern games are replacing movies and then throwing in a interactive layer movies totally lack. Its a bit like when movies got sound ie talkies and then watching those still pushing the silent era format go broke.

Oh, about as much as is lost by sleeping, eating, watching TV, going for a walk..., which is to say, little or none. Maybe if you're a hardliner business type, every minute not spent working is a minute wasted, but for the rest of the world out there, time != money, and spare time during the day even less so.

Nevermind the argument that can be raised that relaxing when you can, whatever it is you do to relax, generally helps you be more productive when you *are* at work.

Yes, before I "discovered" that damn game I was going out several nights a week, wasting my money in pussy and beer. Now I wake up and fire up my 3 clients, get to work late, come back and fire them up again until I drop asleep.

After more than a year with this routine I have already paid-off 3 formerly maxed-out credit cards (2 more to go). All for $35/month.

I played a MUD right up until 2002. Please don't tell anyone. The MUD was DragonRealms from play.net. The average nightly players are still near 1000. All text baby. Prep Fireball, wait, cast!My first text based game was ZORK on a C64. The farmer's sons were insane.

The key phrase there is "go to the movies". Around me movies are around $10-$12 a ticket, any food you buy is going end up costing more than the ticket to get in. For two people one and a half to two hours of entertainment is going to set you back at least $50 most of the time. For that same money I can buy a new game (yea technically for the 360 and PS3 they are $60 but someone always has them on sale the week of release) and get 2-3x more entertainment per dollar at a minimum and 10x more on average. Worse yet most theatres are a lousy experience at any cost. I took in Star Trek a couple weeks back and sat in a fairly crowded theatre while people around kept text messaging or talking, the near-sighted projectionist left the film slightly out of focus for the entire movie and I had to watch 20 minutes worth of commercial not including the credits before the movie even started. It was a quick reminder of why I go to the movies about once a year which is about how long it evidently takes me to forget how bad the last experience was. On the other hand I rent and buy a ton of DVD's, its cheaper and a better experience.

The quality is great, I don't have to deal with jack asses in the theater, and it is cheap. Unless I really want to see it in the theater for some reason, then, I just catch it at home six months later.

Similar here. Rented DVDs, a projector, and a surround-sound system. Have friends over to watch a film three or four times and you've spent less than if you want to the cinema between you. Getting them to pay probably wouldn't go down well, but you can easily persuade them to bring food and booze.

Really? As a hardcore gamer some of the best games I've ever played have come out in the last few years. Fallout 3, Bioshock, Orange Box, Call of Duty 4, Mass Effect, GTA4, STALKER, Geometry Wars, GH3, God of War 2 to name a few from a massive list.

I wasn't attempting to disprove your generalisation, sir. I merely attempted to prove, using deduction, that you had not in fact played Braid, and I was correct. Nyah.

Generally, I agree with your generalisation, that games haven't gotten any better. In fact, I think they've gotten worse - lost up their own asses, if you will - since they started adding five, six, seven, etc. buttons to the controllers. But Braid came along, and renewed my faith in the medium. It is a true work of art, and I recommend, highl

I think you need to distinguish between quality and gameplay. If a game has a finite budget (as they all do) you spend money where marketing believes it will make the most money. Lately that seems to be graphics. (And I do hope we focus more on gameplay moving forward and less on graphics as Nintendo has.) But as a 3D artist myself I can assure you that making all these 3d objects with textures is a time consuming process, now throw in normal maps, spec maps, bumps on top of that, and some paralax mappi

Shhhh! Don't tell anyone (especially the MPAA), but you can already "go to the movies" in Second Life -- there are a number of virtual movie theaters on the grid and they get their content from YouTube, private machines, or from a movie streaming service.

The popcorn is usually free but unfortunately, like in RealLife, you shouldn't expect the theater to be chatter-free when other people are there. Of course, you could just buy or create your own virtual television set and enjoy them in your own virtual home instead.

Though I doubt Linden Labs will be sponsoring any events around one of them any time soon, you may be able to get virtually employed by at least one of them if you were so inclined.